This is probably enforced at the policy level rather than systematic, like many other things in the credit card industry. The likely implementation of this, is

This is probably enforced at the policy level rather than systematic, like many other things in the credit card industry. The likely implementation of this, is that the merchant will be liable for chargebacks if they can't prove that the they've sent the consent email or text message. Usually a recurring transaction has a different indicator flag set (ISO 8583 field 22, IIRC), and AFAIK subjected to a different liability profile than a standard e-commerce transaction. So I believe this has more impact on the merchant side than a customer. Disclosure: I (used to) work in credit card payment industry. I have not read the details on this one, though.